Now there might never be another time.
“Duncan, I… I never did get a chance to talk to you about what happened.”
He looked back with his eyebrow raised, as if she were some pretentious schoolgirl deserving of detention. She could tell he wasn’t going to make this easy for her.
“Water under the bridge,” he said.
“On that train platform in Watertown, when we parted ways. I was emotional, and I… said some things I shouldn’t have. I’m really sorry about that.”
He looked at her carefully, his face a mask of control. “You’re sorry you said some things?”
“You know I respect your faith, Duncan. Just because I don’t have the same passion for the Credo, it wasn’t okay to insult your beliefs. It wasn’t a good reason for us to part ways,” Madison said.
“I know it wasn’t that,” Duncan said, softening his tone. “It was about how to rally the bandit communities together. We disagreed on the best approach. I get it. It’s fine, Madison. I’m over it.”
“It’s true. It seemed like you were trying to get them to follow us like some cult. Now I understand it’s just a different path to get to the same goal. You wanted to invoke their passion for justice, whereas I wanted to invoke an academic sense of justice. Both of us wanted to end up with a society built on a strong foundation.”
Duncan nodded. “The truth is, Madison, I learned a lot from you, and as I travelled farther north, I often deferred to your methods. The Quebecois, for example, would never have taken me in as an Adherent preacher. It was the New Founder principles they were interested in. They only began listening to my Adherent teachings years later.”
“Why did you stay there for so long?” Madison asked.
“Mostly because I had failed elsewhere. It was too hard to rally groups of bandits together in Watertown or Plattsburg. I would set some foundations in place and then some rogue would revert them all back into savagery, erasing any progress I made. Twice I was almost killed for edging in on someone else’s political turf. With the Quebecois it was easier because they were already established.”
“How so?”
“Maybe it was because that far north, it’s too cold to go outside much of the year. As a result they built huge bunkers the people lived and work in for months at a time. This allowed them to easily convert to using Faraday cages so they could have ample electrical heating, refrigerators, ovens, lights and many other things we didn’t have. In that respect, they were much more advanced than we were here and open to talking about prudent risks related to technology.”
Duncan looked away from her reflectively. “On a social level they were missing something, though. Their leadership was weak and fleeting, and they would easily get into fights with neighboring tribes. When I came they took to the New Founder principles, and it helped them. They banded together to become more like a Spoke town. Some of them even became Adherents. Some of them, like Cecile, thought we needed to do something about the warnings in the Credo, so she took it upon herself to try to find the sanctuary.”
“I also learned from you,” Madison said, nodding. “I used to hate doing speeches. Well, in Yorktown I gave regular speeches, and it helped me rally them together. So maybe in the end we both succeeded, in some way thanks to each other.”
He laughed a cheap laugh. “Funny how things turned out.”
She felt hollow. She hadn’t yet arrived at the root of her discomfort. She had let the conversation take a different path. It was time to get it over with.
Madison took a deep breath. “There was one more thing you said to me on that platform before we parted. You said it’s your fault.” Her voice cracked. “You called me a baby killer.”
Duncan’s eyes widened in shock. “I don’t remember that,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “I couldn’t have—”
She held up her hand, holding his tongue. “You did. You may not remember it. It was said among curse words and accusations slung by both of us, many of which were untrue. I called you a zealot, an animal, and a coward. You called me a naïve bitch, an idealist, a heathen, but also a baby killer.”
“I don’t remember saying that. If I did, I’m so sorry. What happened to Elizabeth—”
He noticed her raising her hand again. “Please,” she said, “let me finish. I have waited many years to say this. I want to get it right.”
He nodded slowly, ardently.
She said, “We were two ambitious young Seeville lords, risking our reputations with a night of passion. We couldn’t admit to the other lords our mistake, never mind to our friends and families. You were mentored by the Okafors. I was mentored by the Lechkys. We were oil and water that magically mixed on one fateful night. And so we fled from the controversy.”
“I don’t think that’s right,” Duncan said. “We were leaving because the lords were impotent, because no one cared about the principles of Seeville’s founding. Warrick left for the same reasons.”
“Yes, it’s true,” Madison said. “We had many good reasons to leave. I might have left Seeville without being pregnant. The problems were rampant. But the bigger problem was that I was too naïve. I believed running away from my problems could fix them. With Elizabeth growing inside of me, it was so easy to claim that we were protecting her by leaving, while we were really obscuring our own problems to the people around us.”
“I don’t think—”
“Wait,” she interrupted again.
He nodded slowly. He looked frustrated but also nervous. He knew she was going to forge ahead; he knew she was going venture down that painful path.
“And then, when Elizabeth was stillborn, it tore a hole into me, and into you. We tried to find someone to blame, so we blamed each other. This vision of the future we had created for our unborn daughter was shattered. We no longer needed to work together to make that future a reality. Or maybe it was just too painful to see each other every day, and to remember our poor girl…”
She breathed in and forced herself to move on. “Whatever the reason, we chose to not speak about Elizabeth, to ignore the dark spot in our soul, and instead blame our problems on everything else. We chose to blame each other.”
He looked away from her, his jaw clenching. When he turned back she could see his eyes were charged with emotion. “What do you want, Madison?” he said, sounding caged, beleaguered.
She spoke slowly, with as much care as she could muster. “It’s simple, really. I want the unspoken truth to finally be spoken. I can no longer shun our misfortune, because it’s part of who I am. At least with it here, in the open, I can measure it, I can see the trail of tragedy it has left, and I know what it has done to us. At least, with it exposed, I am no longer fearful of it.”
He wouldn’t look at her. His face was rigid, looking down. A tear paraded down his face. “I’m sorry, Madison,” he whispered.
“Thank you Duncan, but I don’t want your apology. Nor do I want your forgiveness for my spiteful words. No, I only wanted to tell you what has been on my mind for these many years. I bear you no ill will.”
She watched him. He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were distant, his mind on a voyage through the past.
She reached out to him and put her hand on his. He awoke from his introspection, looked back at her, and nodded. He covered her hand with his own and pressed down ever so slightly. It was a sign of acknowledgement, a sign of understanding.
She pulled her hand away and left him there.
Her own tears were streaming down her face now. But hers were tears of consolation, not of loss. They were for Duncan’s pain, not hers. She had gone through this talk too many times in her mind. She had already cried too many tears for Elizabeth.